South of the Clouds: Songtsam Retreat, Shangri-la

Set on a hillside directly overlooking the Songtsam Monastery, the Songtsam Retreat offers a taste of Tibet to the traveler in China. The collection of buildings are built in the style of Tibetan stone houses, and despite its grandeur, the quietly unassuming Retreat blends nicely with its surrounds. Heavy blankets cover thick doorways (which are locked with wooden bolts) to trap heat inside, and every room has a wood stove, all of which manages to infuse a bit of rustic and give it a “lodge” feel.

Gadling visited the Songtsam Retreat in November on a tour with WildChina. Here are our impressions.

The Check-In

The lobby of the Retreat is filled with Tibetan antiques and artifacts, as well as the requisite wood stove. Roomy chairs and couches sit in front of low tables lit with candles, and the ambiance manages to be both grand and cozy. Staff serve you a warming cup of ginger tea, and then you’re lead cross the stone walkways to your room. There you’ll find a warm fire already glowing.

%Gallery-114505%The Rooms

There are 75 rooms at the Songtsam Retreat, and even the smallest can be considered a suite. Big beds, a sitting area with a wide coffee table topped with magazines and fresh fruit, a wardrobe, large TV, and a fireplace make up the expansive rooms. Windows gaze out to farmland and the monastery, and back porches with lounge chairs offer the same view (but with a bit of a chill). Large rugs cover hand-laid wood floors.

Beds are large, set on low, wide platforms and topped with thick mountain blankets. Reading lamps and a “captain’s” headboard for storing water and books take up less space than regular nightstands. Water, fruit, and tea-making appliances are provided, and the rooms are equipped with wifi.

The Bathrooms

Our bathroom was a bit on the small side compared to the room, but still perfectly adequate. Some rooms come with deep timber bathtubs, but ours had a simple stand-up shower. Stone walls contrasted nicely with the modern facilities. Shower products were kept in ceramic pitchers – definitely one of the more unique and charming presentations we’ve seen. A small, frosted-glass window let in natural light.

The Bar and Restaurant

The drinking and dining facilities are located in a large, three-story building. High ceilings and low tables and chairs add space to the dining room, an appropriate continuation of the wide open space outside. Rooftop dining terraces also connect you with the surroundings, while the sunken bar/library lounge area creates intimacy.

A large breakfast buffet offers both Western and Chinese choices, from an omelet bar to rice porridge. Tibetan specialties such as yak hot pot are on the menu and shouldn’t be missed.

The Facilities

Spa services such as massage are offered and can be booked at the front desk. A meditation room furthers the “retreat” experience.

The Bottom Line

The Songtsam Retreat is definitely something special. Ninety percent of the lodge’s staff are from minority groups; most are Tibetan but there are also many Naxi. They receive language and skills training, and are genuinely friendly. Furthermore, the Retreat’s rural location and overall design ensure both a comfortable stay and a unique experience. There’s nothing quite like waking up and pulling back the curtains to a view of the monastery rooftops, smokey mountain air, and farmland. And while many hotels that try to create a “feeling” can come off as cheesy and chintzy, the Songtsam Retreat does a fine job of establishing a mix of Tibetan-rural and lodge-comfortable.

Read more about Gadling’s travel through Yunnan, China here.

Though our stay at the Songtsam Retreat was funded by WildChina, the opinions expressed here are all our own.

South of the Clouds: Shangri-la, Yunnan, China

Gadling’s last stop on Yunnan’s ancient tea horse road was Shangri-la, China, a high-altitude Tibetan city named after the mythical town in John Hilton’s “Lost Horizon.” Full of snapping prayer flags in high-altitude sunlight, the town has only been called Shangri-la since 2001, when a successful marketing venture changed its name from Zhongdian to appeal to adventure-seekers. Most Chinese still refer to it as Zhongdian, though it’s worth noting that its Tibetan name is Gyalthang.

Shangri-la’s residents are mostly Han and Tibetan, and it’s common to see red-cheeked Tibetan-Chinese dressed in traditional clothing. The architecture, especially in the countryside, is uniquely Tibetan: large, square, three story homes house animals on the ground level, with human living quarters above. New homes are still being built in this style. Wood stoves (frustratingly drafty) occupy space in every restaurant, home, and guesthouse, often with the staff huddled around them.

%Gallery-113848%Things to see and do

Like Dali and Lijiang, Shangri-la has an “old city,” with the usual cobblestones and new-old architecture, as well as a very Chinese “new city,” full of traffic and electronics shops. The Thangka Academy is a center in the old town for Tibetan culture and learning. Students, usually orphans, are taught the ancient art of Thangka, an intricate style of Buddhist painting of deities. Foreigners can study Tibetan or meditate here.

Though Shangri-la’s narrow, old-city streets are pleasant for a wander, it’s the town’s surrounds that make the trip worthy.

The Songstam Monastery houses monks of the yellow hat sect of Tibetan Buddhism. It’s the biggest Tibetan monstery in China, and certainly worth a visit. Besides monks and temples, you’ll see juniper burning in the mornings, pigs snuffing around the dusty grounds, tourists snapping photos, and a hodge-podge of colorful buildings built on several levels.

The monastery was built during the Qing Dynasty in 1679, and now houses 700 monks as well as 11 temples. In the tea-horse road days, the monastery stored tea, waited for the price to rise, and then sold it for a profit. The complex was destroyed by the Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution and has since been rebuilt, though remnants of ancient mud walls still linger.

Beyond the monastery is Napa Hai, a lake and wetland with misty mountains backing them. More than a dozen Tibetan villages surround the lake, which is also home to black-necked cranes. We rented mountain bikes from one of the many bike rental shops in town, and road the often-muddy, sometimes treacherous roads out to the lake. A new highway being built ought to smooth the ride out significantly.

Getting there

Buses bound for Zhongdian depart regularly from Lijiang, Dali and Kunming. Diqing airport has daily flights to Kunming.

At nearly 10,000 feet, Shangri-la takes a day or two to acclimate to, especially if you fly in. Take care when drinking alcohol your first couple of nights, and be sure to drink lots of water.

For more about Gadling’s travels in Yunnan, click here.

Though our trip to Shangri-la was partially funded by WildChina, the opinions expressed here are all our own.

South of the Clouds: Yunnan’s ancient tea-horse road

In November, Gadling traveled with WildChina throughout Yunnan province. The theme of the trip was “the ancient tea-horse road,” and it followed a trading route that runs from Yunnan’s tropical lowlands up to the Tibetan plateau and eventually in to India.

As the name implies, the “road” was a caravan route along which tea and horses were traded, though salt was also a major commodity. Lesser known than its glamorous older sibling, the Silk Road, the tea-horse road was nevertheless an important trade route. Though defined in the singular, the tea-horse road was actually a series of small trade routes; it was rare for traders to travel the entire route.

Tea, still grown and fermented for travel in Yunnan today, was carried north, while mules and horses from Tibet plodded south. Small traces of the original trade still exist: condensed bundles of tea packed into bamboo pipes at a rural market, an old square in a village where horse stalls still sit behind a guesthouse once used by muleteers (those who traveled the route with mules), and even a few people who worked in the trade before 1949.

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Though the route extends all the way to India, we focused only on locations in Yunnan. First we visited Xishuangbanna prefecture, at the south of the province. Here, Pu-er tea is grown on small trees whose size belies their age: many are several hundred years old. We then traveled to Dali, a conduit market town where tea traders and growers traveled north to meet Tibetans who had journeyed south. The Bai minority group still live in and around Dali and were middlemen between the tea and horse traders.

After Dali came Shaxi, a market town where we met the son of a muleteer who was killed by bandits. Everyone in Shaxi once depended on the tea-horse trade, as it was an important stopover town along the route. Today, Shaxi’s market square still fills every Friday with Yi villagers who dress up and travel for fun, trading, and food.

After a quick stop in Lijiang, another conduit market town filled with rushing canals and cobble-stoned streets, we climbed up to Shangri-la. A town packed with prayer flags, restaurants serving yak meat, and the distant lure of giant mountains, Shangri-la (also called Zhongdian) at times feels more Tibetan than mainstream Chinese. A few sad horses lingered near a marshy lake, decorated and waiting for tourists to reenact the glory days of the trade route with horse rides.

By no means the end of the line for traders, Shangri-la was nevertheless an appropriate ending point for our trip. We’d gone from summer temps in sub-tropical Xishuangbanna to near-freezing at 10,000 feet, and it was time to go home and warm up with a nice cup of tea.

Read more about our travels in Yunnan here.

Though my trip was funded by WildChina, the opinions expressed here are all my own.